Sorrow Road (Bell Elkins #5) - Julia Keller Page 0,59

as extensive as Rhonda’s, but as he often said, “Give me time.” He had only been living and working in Acker’s Gap for three years. Moreover, his informants were more likely to be from the sleazy side of the line—pimps, addicts, dealers, prostitutes—whereas Rhonda’s people were churchgoers and old folks. Different universes. Both important to a prosecutor’s office.

“So. Lorilee. Appreciate you coming by,” Bell said.

“No choice. Damned deputy made me.” Lorilee’s voice sounded like she’d been gargling with Clorox. “What the fuck’s going on?”

“Your grandmother was murdered two nights ago.”

“Like I don’t know that. I know, okay? They told me.” Lorilee sneered. The expression necessitated the flexing of a nostril, the one with the infected piercing, and she winced. “Why’m I here? What’s the deal? Ain’t done nothing wrong.”

“I’m hoping you can help us.” Bell knew there was absolutely no point in lecturing Lorilee Coates, in trying to inspire her to lead another kind of life. Her grandmother, Rhonda said, had tried to do that, over and over again, year after year. It never worked. Nothing worked. And so Bell understood that there was no percentage in threatening Lorilee, or cajoling her, or bargaining with her, or reminding her that she was still young enough to change everything. That she could get clean. That she could, once again, see things as they really were, see a panorama of crisp edges and depth of field—not a pinched-off, woozy haze, viewed through a constant stupor.

If Lorilee Coates had not responded to the sweet grandmother who loved her, she sure as hell was not going to respond to the meddlesome prosecutor who most assuredly did not love her.

All the young woman could do for them right now was to provide information. Maybe. If she had it, and if she was inclined to share.

“Help you do what?” Loriliee said, her voice chipped and gravelly with I suspect a trap tension.

“Figure out why someone would have wanted to murder your grandmother.”

Lorilee narrowed her eyes. “Look, if you’re trying to say that I had something to do with that—you are fucked up, lady. Wasn’t even in Raythune County that night.”

“I know.” Bell had already ascertained Lorilee’s whereabouts at the time of the killings so that she could rule her out as the perpetrator. Deputy Oakes had located several witnesses that put her in Room 27 at the Sundowner Motel in Chester with four other people—using her wiles, such as they were, to obtain enough black tar heroin to get her through until morning.

“So if you know,” said a newly peeved Lorilee, “then why the hell you asking?”

“Because you occasionally stayed at your grandmother’s house, right? For a few days, sometimes a week? When you didn’t have anywhere else to go?”

“Yeah. She was good to me, Granny was. Real good. Loved me. After my folks threw me out, she was the only one in the family who’d speak to me.” Lorilee looked as if she was going to cry. “The only one.” Now she did cry, loud, snot-laden tears that surged up out of nowhere. Emotional incontinence, Bell knew, was one of the more common and harmless side effects of chronic drug use. “Nobody else gave a rat’s ass,” Lorilee went on. “Only Granny. And now she’s gone.”

Bell handed her a tissue. Instead of using it, Lorilee wadded it up and stuck it in the pocket of her cutoffs. Maybe she thought she could resell it later for cash.

“Did your grandmother keep money or valuables in her home?” Bell asked.

Lorilee snorted. A bubble of snot escaped her left nostril. “Hell, no. She used to—but then she and me had ourselves a misunderstanding, and she didn’t do that no more. Didn’t keep no money in the house. Little bit she had, she put in a savings account.”

The misunderstanding was that Lorilee had robbed her too many times. Bell knew that without having to ask for particulars. She was just about to ask another question when Lorilee spoke again.

“And the thing is, she didn’t really have no more. Even her savings account was down to nothing. That’s what she said. And Granny never lied. See, she wanted to send me to another place. To get me some help. Talked about it all the damned time. But she couldn’t. ’Cause she didn’t have no more money. She’d heard about this new place out in California. Better, she said, than the lame-ass places ’round here that they’re always sending me to.” Lorilee nodded, agreeing with herself, her movement as loose and